Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In regard to the one portion of it—“the committee reinvite the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to appear on Thursday, March 31 and if the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance is not available, the committee invite Statistics Canada”—I want to reiterate how important it is for us to hear from the Minister of Finance on inflation, this being such a key issue. I don't think there's a bigger issue that everyone's talking about, right now, in the finance field.
If Statistics Canada ends up coming because the Minister of Finance decides not to come to the committee, I'd like to talk a bit about the CPI, housing and how it reports, and also about how the CPI has worked, historically—we haven't seen inflation like this for 30 years—versus the “basket of goods” that the CPI captures today. I'd also like to talk about the business confidence study that it recently issued.
Statistics Canada, I know, will want to come with at least some inkling of what I, at least.... I invite other members to discuss it, if they want to flag particular issues for StatsCan.